I do both and I am trying to help other hackers figure out more about design as well.
A: I usually have a vision in mind for the project or the feature. To do this I try and break it down into smaller parts and optimize for the one thing I want the users to do for that part. For complicated designs I go through ideas on a notepad before I settle on something. The most important part of this process is to understand why a certain design element needs to be put in. If my design elements lack purpose I take them out.
Once I have that then I go about building stuff. Sometimes the end result will differ from the vision in which case it might literally be "back to the drawing board".
C: I'm generally against outsourcing UI/UX. I think specific icon and graphic design work can be outsourced. To me UI/UX is the app itself and early on you don't necessarily have a clear view of what it is going to be.
D: I started off as a developer and found the need to incorporate better design. I started by trying to understand what I like and why I like it. I found a couple of big problems: there weren't too many good resources that catered to our type, most design advice wasn't practical enough and improving my taste took a long while.
I'm putting together a series of posts on what I learnt, hopefully that helps people out. Feel free to get in touch via Twitter or email.
A: I usually have a vision in mind for the project or the feature. To do this I try and break it down into smaller parts and optimize for the one thing I want the users to do for that part. For complicated designs I go through ideas on a notepad before I settle on something. The most important part of this process is to understand why a certain design element needs to be put in. If my design elements lack purpose I take them out.
Once I have that then I go about building stuff. Sometimes the end result will differ from the vision in which case it might literally be "back to the drawing board".
B: I haven't found too many recent ones. But I generally prefer patterns like these - http://developer.yahoo.com/ypatterns/
C: I'm generally against outsourcing UI/UX. I think specific icon and graphic design work can be outsourced. To me UI/UX is the app itself and early on you don't necessarily have a clear view of what it is going to be.
D: I started off as a developer and found the need to incorporate better design. I started by trying to understand what I like and why I like it. I found a couple of big problems: there weren't too many good resources that catered to our type, most design advice wasn't practical enough and improving my taste took a long while.
I'm putting together a series of posts on what I learnt, hopefully that helps people out. Feel free to get in touch via Twitter or email.